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BROOKE HERFORD 



A MEMOIR 



by 



JOHN CUCKSON 

Minister of the First Church, 
Plymouth, Mass. 



BOSTON 
American Unitarian Association 
1904 



ftoo Ooptes skived 
OCT 10 1904 
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Copyrighted 1904, 
by John Cuckson. 



Published September, 1904. 



CONTENTS. 



Birth and early education 5 

Collegiate training 10 

Todmorden, England, 1851 16 

Sheffield, England, 1856 20 

Manchester, England, 1864 34 

Chicago, United States, 1875 40 

Boston, United States, 1882 50 

London, England, 1892 72 

Literary work 77 



"What's here? 
A scroll pinned to a wreath — 
A wreath that I was bold enough 
To take down, if but to guess 
What flowers had made it." 

— Alfred Tennyson. 



BROOKE HERFORD 



Birth and Early Education. 

The subject of this brief memoir was born 
at Altrincham, in Cheshire, England, on the 
2 ist of February, 1830. He was the young- 
est son of John and Sarah Herford. His 
father was a merchant, moderately success- 
ful, enterprising and vigorous, and eager to 
provide for the family of eight children de- 
pendent upon him. His mother was the 
daughter of Edward Smith, of Birmingham, 
a member of the Old Meeting House, the 
church in which Dr. Priestley ministered, 
and from which he was driven by a riotous 
mob in 1 791, on account of his supposed 
leanings towards materialism, and sympa- 
thy with French Republicanism. The char- 
acter of the parents was well illustrated in 
their children, so many of whom became 



6 Birth and Early Education. 

distinguished for their ability and probity 
in positions of trust and responsibility and 
public service. One made himself known 
and widely respected, in Manchester; an- 
other was successful as a scholar and teacher ; 
and a third won distinction in England and 
America, as preacher and pastor. The stock 
was of the virile type, strong and indepen- 
dent, not all leaning in one direction relig- 
iously, this being prominent as a promoter 
of the open pew system in the English Epis- 
copal Church, and those finding refuge in 
Unitarianism. Brooke Herford received 
his earliest education in Manchester, at a 
school kept by the Rev. John Relly Beard, 
D. D., a scholar of some eminence, and a 
Unitarian Minister. After several years 
spent in this school, and when he was six- 
teen years of age, the youth was apprenticed 
to his father's business, and was sent to 
Bordeaux. Although he afterwards looked 
upon the business training he received as a 
helpful preparation for the profession, to 
which he later devoted himself, there were 
early influences at work within him, which 
made trade less and less interesting, and re- 



Lower Mosley S treat. 



7 



ligious work, of a simple and practical kind, 
more and more inviting. The bias of his 
mind was slowly driving him away from the 
keen pursuit of secular interests, and an am- 
bition to serve his generation in religious and 
social enterprises was taking possession of 
him. 

This tendency received a marked impulse 
from an attachment to the Lower Mosley 
street schools, in Manchester, where an 
effort was being made to afford an education 
to children and young people, whose training 
had been neglected, and by social sympathy, 
to help those to whom religion was not a 
luxury, but a daily necessity. Not only were 
various classes formed for instruction, but a 
system of home-visiting was adopted, and a 
"Home Visitor" was appointed whose time 
was given to the demands of personal help 
and comfort in the district. This work was 
undertaken by Travers Madge, the son of 
Thomas Madge, minister of the Octagon 
Chapel, Norwich, 

"A prophet from a child approved." 
an unconventional mystic, impressed with 
the idea that if the unchurched masses were 



8 



Travers Madge. 



to be held to any form of Christianity, it 
must be by closer and more helpful sympa- 
thy between the rich and the poor, the edu- 
cated and the uneducated. The "Home 
Visitor" lived among his people, shared their 
poverty and hardships, and became one of 
them. He renounced worldly advancement, 
lived very sparingly, led a wholly unselfish 
life, and exerted a striking personal influ- 
ence upon those about him. His work was 
distinctly religious. All other movements 
were subordinated to the one task of mak- 
ing Christianity a helpful reality to those 
who had little else to sustain them, in the 
hard struggle for existence. He went to 
them, not to be ministered unto but to min- 
ister, and to give his life as a pledge of his 
earnestness and sincerity. Brooke Herford 
fell under the spell of this devoted man, at 
the most susceptible period of his life, and 
at a time when young men of his age were 
bent upon business and pleasure, he was led 
into religious and social work, which called 
for the partial suppression of natural gaiety, 
and the consecration of his fresh abilities and 
energies, to that which was destined to be 



Travers Madge. 



9 



the great mission of his life. His call to the 
ministry grew out of his work among the 
children and young people of the Lower 
Moslev street schools, and his friendship 
with Travers Madge. 



Collegiate Training. 

In 1848, he entered Manchester New Col- 
lege, to prepare himself for the min- 
istry. His father did not approve of the 
step, presumably because he saw in it the 
renunciation of worldly advantage, and, like 
most fathers, was prone to regard material 
prosperity, as the chief aim in life, or at 
least the indispensable condition of domes- 
tic and social comfort. 

His son not only thought otherwise, but 
was resolutely determined in his purpose. 
The prospect of comparative poverty did 
not deter him. Travers Madge had lived al- 
most on bread and water during his college 
course, and he could do the same, if need be. 
Plain living had been the lot of others, and 
what the men whom he revered and re- 
spected had endured, he also could face in 
the fulfilment of an overmastering desire. 
Besides, he early learnt the truth, that "man 
doth not live by bread alone," and his happi- 
ness does not consist in his possessions, a 
truth which was abundantly illustrated in 
his later life, when neither adversity nor 



10 



Manchester New College. n 

prosperity availed to change his essential 
character, or to touch his underlying and 
endurable manhood. 

Manchester New College, originally the 
Warrington Academy, removed to York, and 
from thence to Manchester, was an old Non- 
conformist foundation, established to provide 
sound learning for dissenting ministers, free 
from ecclesiastical and theological restric- 
tions. Its founders, who were interested in 
the English Presbyterian Churches, estab- 
lished upon open trusts for the worship of 
Almighty God without doctrinal bonds, were 
resolved that theology should be studied with 
as much freedom from restraint as any other 
branch of learning. Professors and students 
of the academy or college were to enjoy such 
liberty as could not be found in any other 
English institution for the training of min- 
isters. The standard of learning was to be 
maintained throughout, and the pursuit of 
truth, in the Scriptures and out of them, was 
to be conducted without let or hindrance. 
The college equipment did not include a 
court for the trial of heretics. The faculty 
was not under any obligation to teach any- 



12 Manchester New College. 

thing it did not believe, and the students 
were at liberty to follow the light wherever 
reverence and learning revealed it. 

Brooke Herford brought to his studies, 
more than the average ability, and a com- 
mendable perseverance in the tasks he set 
himself to accomplish. His natural tempera- 
ment was not academic, that is, it was not 
disposed to make learning, whether classical 
or scientific, the end of a collegiate training. 
He was at college to fit himself for preach- 
ing and pastoral work, and not to be a pro- 
fessor or the author of learned treatises. 
He, therefore, sought and obtained enough 
learning to enable him to do the work of a 
minister with credit, and did not load himself 
with superfluous baggage, which might check 
the ardour of his exuberant nature. He 
would be scholarly enough for the precise 
function to which he felt called, but had no 
desire to fit himself for any other calling, in 
which academic training of a severer kind 
was indispensable. In a grateful tribute to 
Dr. Martineau, published in 1900, he wrote: 

"I shall never forget the impression that he 
made upon me when, in 1848, after four years 



Manchester Nezv College. 13 



rough drill of office life, my mind had got the 
bent, which drew me to the ministry, and 
after a hard grind of preparation I went as a 
student to Manchester New College, then in 
Manchester. It was not his thought as a 
teacher that took hold of me. I am afraid 
I seemed to him a very poor student. For 
it was Sunday School teaching and working 
in the slums, off business hours, that had 
drawn me towards the ministry, and James 
Martineau's course in mental philosophy was 
something utterly new and strange to me, and 
after desperate attempts to keep hold of the 
thread of his abstruse argument, I am afraid 
I often ended by going to sleep. But the 
Professor never knew that that sleepy youth 
of the class-room had often walked half-way 
to town to meet him, for the sake of a good 
look into his absorbed and eager face as he 
passed up the road to college, and then had 
sometimes turned into a side street, and run 
ahead to see it again. There was such an 
uplifting even in his very face ! It was dif- 
ferent the second year, when I had moral 
philosophy with him; that subject touched 
closer on human nature and will, and I began 
to feel the power of those splendid sentences, 
which we old students often recognize again in 
his Types of Ethical Theory.' Then, I think 
it was, we got that sense of the divineness of 
human nature, and of the absolute reality of 
man's free-will, which has been the immovable 
foundation of any work we have been able to 
do in the world." 



14 Manchester New College. 

There was nothing pretentious in the out- 
ward appearance of this poor College of Dis- 
senters, housed in a suburban dwelling, with 
parlours and bedrooms fitted up as lecture- 
rooms; but noble traditions were there, and 
an academic atmosphere in no sense inferior 
to that which pervaded the halls of Oxford 
and Cambridge. The professors, both clergy- 
men and laymen, w r ere scholars and thinkers, 
who have left their mark in literature; and 
not a few of their pupils take rank in biblical 
and theological learning, with the best which 
the older universities have to produce. The 
college had no power to confer degrees, 
which is the privilege of every college of any 
size in America, but students were examined 
by the appointed examiners of London Uni- 
versity, and so obtained degrees, which at 
that time were given by Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, only after submission to theological 
tests. It was an inestimable privilege for a 
young man of talent and capacities to be 
under the personal influence and scholarly 
training of such men as James Martineau, 
John James Tayler, Francis William New- 
man, and others like-minded. The personal 



Manchester New College. 15 

equation counted for much, and young Her- 
ford was perhaps more susceptible to that, 
than to anything else. He grew up in the 
habit of vigorous thinking on practical 
themes, and so absorbed was he in his 
favourite studies, that he became eager and 
impatient to put his theories to trial, in the 
active work of the ministry. 



B. H. 



11 



Todmorden 1851. 

His college course came to an end in 1851, 
and as a young man of twenty-one, he set- 
tled at Todmorden, a market town on the 
borders of two counties, partly in Yorkshire 
and partly in Lancashire. The staple indus- 
try of this town was the spinning and weav- 
ing of cotton, and the population consisted 
of mill-hands, and their employers. Here 
was a thriving Unitarian Church and schools, 
largely supported by the Fielden Brothers, 
and attended by their work-people. The 
congregation was made up chiefly of hard- 
headed, thrifty artizans, open to receive 
counsel and help from their minister, but 
strongly disposed, like all men of their class, 
to free thought and the free expression of 
it, with a decided partiality for their own 
views. The community was alive with social 
and industrial problems, and a young minis- 
ter would have to move cautiously and cir- 
cumspectly in his attempts to apply the prin- 
ciples of practical Christianity to the rich 
and poor, the capitalist and the laborer, in 



16 



Marriage. I? 

such a hot-bed of conflicting interests. But, 
this, and not anything easier, or more profit- 
able, was the special field which the young 
minister had chosen. He wanted, above all 
things, to be the living leader of an active 
church, with a life full of warm human inter- 
ests, and opportunities of helpful service. 
His whole nature demanded just such a place 
for the development of power, and in no 
other sphere could he have met with finer 
scope for his best ambitions. Moreover, he 
resolved not to enter upon his life-work 
alone. Among the busy band of teachers at 
the Lower Mosley street schools was Han- 
nah, daughter of Mr. William Hankinson, of 
Hale, who became his wife, and cheerful 
helper for nearly half a century. They were 
a well-matched and happy pair, 

"Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, 
Distinct in individualities, 
But like each other ev'n as those who love." 

Together they wrought for five years in this 
Yorkshire vale, familiar with the humblest 
folk, and responding to the calls made upon 
them, visiting the sick and poor, dispensing 
counsel and comfort to the perplexed and 



i8 



To dm or den. 



sorely tried, contented to do the modest par- 
ish work, which had fallen to their lot, and 
to do it always from the most exalted mo- 
tive, and with a cheerful spirit. The minis- 
ter's salary was very small, probably about 
$1,000 a year, and family responsibilities 
grew, but the cost of living was stoically kept 
within the income. It was easier for them to 
suffer want than to bear reproach, to go 
without things they would have liked, than 
to get them without being able to pay for 
them. It was in this period of limited cir- 
cumstances that Brooke Herford acquired 
that habit of manly and honest thrift, with- 
out one streak of meanness in it, which made 
him respected by all who knew him. Some- 
times, in later years, when his annual income 
was large, as ministers' incomes go, he would 
tell of the struggles and privations of his 
early ministry, and end by rejoicing that the 
Lord having tried him so long with poverty, 
had at last given him a taste of better things, 
so that he could say with the Apostle Paul, 
"I know how to be abased, and I know also 
how to abound : in everything and in all 
things have I learned the secret both to be 



Todmorden. 



19 



filled and to be hungry, both to abound and 
to be in want." Having broken bread at his 
table as far back as 1863, and often in Bos- 
ton, I can bear witness that his character 
was unchanged. He was not depressed by 
limitations when his salary was small, nor 
exalted beyond measure, when fortune smiled 
upon him. There was the same air of dig- 
nity, refinement, and comfort in the home 
at Sheffield, as in the home on Chestnut street 
in Boston. 

Mr. Herford remained for five years in 
Todmorden, and left behind him traditions 
of a faithful ministry, which linger still in 
the homes of his old friends and parishion- 
ers, who always spoke of him tenderly and 
familiarly as "Brooke Herford." 



Sheffield, 1856. 

In 1856, he removed to Sheffield, in York- 
shire, and became the minister of Upper 
Chapel, an old Nonconformist parish, de- 
servedly proud of its history, and of its social 
status in the community. It was the relig- 
ious home of many prosperous merchants, 
manufacturers, and professional men, who 
distinguished themselves in the public ser- 
vice, and is associated in my boyish recollec- 
tions, with a long line of carriages stretch- 
ing far down the street, waiting after morn- 
ing service on Sunday, for their owners. It 
was here that the young minister developed 
his strength as pastor and preacher, and al- 
though he was wont, in later life, to speak 
of his ministry in Boston, as the opening to 
him of a larger mission, he never preached 
more effective sermons, or did more helpful 
and successful work, than he did in the days 
of his ministry in this great centre of manu- 
facturing industries. Here it was that he 
began to be a man of more than ordinary 
power, both in the pulpit and out of it. He 



20 



Sheffield. 



21 



was then in the pride of physical strength, 
and was possessed of boundless energy. His 
presence was impressive and his personality 
attractive. No one could fail to be struck 
with his virility and ingenuousness, and 
along with the power to do good, was the 
unfailing disposition to do it, whenever and 
wherever opportunity presented itself. Full 
of vivacitv himself, he was impatient with 
dullness or slothfulness in others, and any 
special work which won his interest had to 
be carried with more or less of a rush. He 
could not dally with enterprises, nor, once 
assured of the imperative necessity of any 
task upon which he had set his heart, would 
he take counsel of doubts or fears. His cour- 
age was equal to emergencies; but, he was 
always proof against anything like foolhardi- 
ness. An imperilled principle would force 
him to buckle on his armour, but he deemed 
it a waste of time and strength, to go out 
shooting follies, whether of the flying or 
the sneaking order. His equanimity saved 
him from the miseries of so many men, not 
less highminded and veracious, but fuller of 
hot, impetuous blood. 



22 



Sheffield. 



At this point, it may be well to form an 
estimate of his gifts and powers as a min- 
ister, for it was in Sheffield that his career 
ripened into large dimensions and the full 
scheme of his life shaped itself. Behind the 
preacher was the man. Brooke Herford 
was sincere, through and through, and 
brought into his profession the qualities 
which alone can make it honored and be- 
loved. He entered his calling, not for a mere 
living, or because it offered scope for social 
position and influence, still less that he might 
lead an easy indulgent life, but that he might 
champion the truth, and commend the Chris- 
tianity of Christ, both by word and example. 
He entered it to stay. No temptation to for- 
sake it, and to take up with an easier or 
more profitable task, was strong enough to 
move him. He accepted the sacred drudg- 
ery of the pulpit and the parish, as the high- 
est service to which he could devote his pow- 
ers, and through all chances and changes, 
with a zeal that never flagged, he found en- 
joyment in preaching, and in pastoral work. 
His sermons, short, pithy, clear and forceful, 
never ragged and scattering, betrayed labour 



Sheffield. 



23 



and care. He was the king of common sense, 
and whatever subject he handled, he threw 
light upon it, and presented it in such a 
way as to move and convince his hearers. 
He was amused at the profundity which lost 
itself in bewildering depths, and the thin 
thought which tried to hide itself in its own 
filmy rhetoric. On one occasion, when a stu- 
dent at college was preaching a sermon be- 
fore him, which he was expected to criticise, 
he dealt unsparingly with its verbal pyro- 
technics. The young preacher indulged in 
glowing periods, with hardly enough solid 
consecutive thought to hold them together. 
When all was over, the professor said, 

"Have you finished, Mr. . There is 

no reason why you should stop. You arose 
like the lark from the meadows, singing as you 
ascended, and eventually reached such an alti- 
tude, that I neither saw nor heard you, your 
notes lost all their distinction, and at last, I 
supposed you must be somewhere, but could 
not exactly tell where you had hidden your- 
self. Exquisite monologues of that sort are 
mellifluous, but not effective. Aim at some- 
thing lower, and you will probably hit it." 

Brooke Herford always had a well-defined 
message which pressed for utterance, and 



24 



Preacher. 



leaving nothing to chance, he took great 
pains by forcible metaphor and striking illus- 
tration, and telling epigram, to lodge it 
where he wished to leave it, and where it 
might be easily carried away, and kept for 
reference. His sermons, as I remember 
them, during the later years of his ministry 
in Sheffield, were remarkable for their sub- 
stance and perspicacity. They were usually 
packed with good sense, and were always 
interesting. The style was simple, the words 
were well chosen, and mostly of one syllable, 
with quaint and sometimes humorous expres- 
sions, and aimed with directness at the heads 
and hearts of his hearers, his main object be- 
ing to save himself from being misunder- 
stood, and to convince those who listened to 
him. His themes were mostly Scriptural, 
and largely drawn from the New Testament. 
When occasion arose, however, he preached 
on public events, and then he spoke fearlessly 
and trenchantly, and those who differed from 
his views felt that he was in dead earnest, 
and approached public questions from high 
moral ground. He had no tricks or manner- 
isms in the pulpit. Artificiality of every kind 



Pastor. 



25 



was alien to his nature. His eloquence was 
born of the truth he had to deliver, and of 
the fervour of his convictions, and from the 
beginning to the end of his sermon, he held 
firm grip upon his hearers. Although the 
sermon was written, the preacher was not a 
slave to his manuscript, and now and then 
would break away from it, without in any 
way disturbing its proportions and unity. 
He was conservative of pulpit proprieties and 
the decorum of public worship, and had a 
horror of crude innovations and sensations. 

Mr. Herford was also a distinguished pas- 
tor. He did not feel, as too many men do, 
that preaching will suffice to hold a parish 
together, or be sufficient for the minister him- 
self. It was necessary for him to know the 
people whom he served, and to know them 
all in such a wav, that they would seek his 
counsel, and welcome his personal sympathy 
and help, in trying emergencies. He must 
enter into closer relations with them, com- 
mand their confidence and affection, and be 
the friend of rich and poor, educated and un- 
educated. His position in this respect was 
unique. It was the source of his deepest sat- 



26 



Pastor. 



isfaction, while it might easily have proved 
the rock upon which he could have wrecked 
himself. A great parish is a curious mix- 
ture of independent personalities and of con- 
flicting interests. There are social distinc- 
tions, and every variety of taste and culture, 
the sincere and the insincere, broad minds 
and narrow ones, the attractive and the re- 
pulsive, the generous and the mean. The 
minister is in a position to know them 
through and through, and to move among 
them circumspectly, and with dignity, tact, 
and self-control, is no small achievement. 
With the best possible intention he may say 
something which provokes harsh criticism, 
or do something innocently, which stirs a 
nest of hornets. Mr. Herford was preemi- 
nently sagacious, and although he had to 
take alternative approval and disapproval, 
like all men who serve the public, he usually 
carried himself with such wise judgment and 
self-repression, that he kept his friends, and 
disarmed his opponents. A keen observer of 
men and things, a shrewd, practical man of 
the world, he bore himself with courage and 
prudence, and escaped difficulties to which 



Zealous Missionary. 27 

less experienced men succumb. He was sen- 
sitive and had his withers wrung at times, 
but made no sign, smothered his indignant 
emotions, and waited the healing effect of 
silence and time. Besides, he was blessed 
with a sunny and optimistic temper. His 
smile was a benediction, and his nature was 
so resilient, that he passed from a disappoint- 
ment or a sorrow with a quick rebound. His 
character, therefore, fitted him for the neces- 
sary work of the minister, outside the pulpit. 
The father of a family, a trusted adviser in 
difficult undertakings, methodic and truthful, 
winning the young by his sympathy, and 
comforting the aged by his tender solicitude, 
he became deservedly popular, and his popu- 
larity was of the kind which lingers and does 
not quickly wane. 

He was a zealous missionary. The faith 
he held, he loved supremely, and never 
missed an opportunity of extending its pow- 
er and influence. The struggling parishes of 
Yorkshire and Derbyshire received his gen- 
erous support, and he responded to nearly 
every demand for his help, often travelling 
long distances, that he might sustain a lan- 



28 



Local Preacher's Class. 



guishing cause. Copying the methods of the 
Wesleyans, he formed a local preachers' 
class, into which he gathered devout laymen, 
whom he instructed in the art of preaching, 
sending them out into rural districts, to carry 
the gospel of Liberal Christianity. This 
class, of which I was a member, met weekly, 
in the minister's vestry of Upper Chapel. 
The meeting opened with prayer, then fol- 
lowed the reading of such books as Higgin- 
son's "Spirit of the Bible," Martineau's "En- 
deavours after the Christian Life," Dean 
Stanley's "Lectures on the Jewish Church," 
and the production of skeleton sermons, 
which were subject to free discussion. The 
members then retired to the Chapel to listen 
to a sermon. The great building was in 
darkness, except for the small light which 
glimmered in the pulpit. The sermon over, 
Mr. Herford commended or criticized its 
substance and character, in a kind and gra- 
cious way. No less than four men left this 
class to enter college, and afterwards to do 
creditable work in the active ministry. 

The institutions of the Church received his 
faithful care. He prepared courses of les- 



The Sheffield Flood. 29 



sons in the Old and New Testaments, for the 
use of his teachers and scholars. It was his 
custom once a month to receive the young 
men of the congregation, at his home, for 
social intercourse, and I count this privilege 
as one of the formative influences in my 
early manhood. Away from home and 
friends, struggling for an education, teach- 
ing daily in one of the public schools of the 
town, with few friends and little leisure for 
recreation, it was a means of grace to enjoy 
even for one brief hour, the warm, refining 
and cheerful hospitality of his home. It was 
good to be there. The conversations were 
bright and humourous, and always on high 
and interesting themes, while the social fel- 
lowships were simple and sincere. 

There were two great occasions during 
Mr. Herford's ministry in Sheffield, in which 
he served the public with distinction — in 
1864, when an inundation, owing to the 
bursting of a reservoir, swept the valleys of 
the Loxley and the Don, carrying desolation 
and ruin in its course. Many homes were 
destroyed, hundreds of people lost their lives, 
and families were left homeless, and with- 



30 



Trades Unionism. 



out food or clothing; and during the organ- 
ized Trades Union crimes of 1860-7. A re- 
lief fund was provided for the benefit of the 
sufferers by the flood, and in the raising and 
distribution of this fund, the minister of the 
Upper Chapel took a prominent part. Day 
after day he visited the flooded district, and 
went from house to house, speaking words 
of comfort, and bestowing substantial help. 

Sheffield had long been famous for its for- 
midable trades unions, secret conclaves of 
workmen and their leaders, employing intim- 
idation and even murder in the carrying out 
of their principles. When a workman made 
himself obnoxious to these petty tyrants of 
industry, some sudden misfortune befell him. 
His house was set on fire, a deadly canister 
of gunpowder was exploded under his win- 
dows, or a bomb was thrown into his bed- 
room at midnight, and his innocent wife and 
children were maimed, and sometimes killed. 
To such an extent was this cowardly and 
brutal conspiracy carried on, that at last the 
attention of Parliament was directed towards 
it, and when appeals to the local authorities 
were in vain, and it was impossible by ordi- 



Trades Unionism. 



3* 



nary process of law to discover and convict 
the offenders, a Royal Commission was ap- 
pointed, in 1867, to investigate the crimes, 
and bring the criminals to justice. The pop- 
ulace was greatly excited over these out- 
rages, as far back as i860, and so bold were 
the leaders in this infamous movement, that 
it became dangerous to raise a voice against 
them. They terrorized the community. But 
Brooke Herford would not be silent, and 
was not to be intimidated. He had used the 
various branches of local trade as parables, 
for the illustration of great moral principles, 
and had lectured on ''Grinding," "Temper- 
ing," "Polishing," and kindred topics, to 
large audiences of working men. Now, he 
was to challenge them to serious controversy. 
He announced a lecture on "Trade Outrages, 
and who is responsible for them," and a 
special invitation was issued to the promoters 
and managers of labor combinations. The 
invitation was generally accepted, and a large 
congregation greeted the lecturer in one of 
the great halls of the town. Before the pro- 
ceedings commenced, the auditorium was 
crowded with men whose sentiments were 



B. H. 



in 



32 



Trades Unionism. 



prevailingly hostile. For more than an hour, 
Mr. Herford gave them some forcible and 
wholesome talk on industrial and social 
righteousness. Taking high moral ground, 
and showing no disposition to evade the 
questions at issue, between trade organiza- 
tions and the moral sentiment of the com- 
munity, he commanded an attentive hearing. 
Dealing fairly with the rights and duties of 
labour, he condemned unsparingly the selfish 
and brutal tactics of the unionists and their 
leaders, who were bringing their cause into 
disrepute by encouraging lawlessness and 
crime. It was a great occasion, and more 
than once, as his voice arose in fearless re- 
buke, his friends trembled for his safety. 
But truth undaunted was victorious. The 
average Englishman admires pluck, even 
though it be in a foreigner or an opponent, 
and as the groups of men filed out of the 
hall, it was obvious that the lecturer had left 
a powerful impression, and by his courage 
had won the respect of those whom he had 
chastised without mercy. 

In the midst of indefatigable work in his 
Church and Sunday School, which would 



Sheffield. 



33 



have tried the strength of a less stalwart man, 
he found time for service on various boards 
of philanthropy and charity. 



Manchester, 1864. 

After a pastorate of over nine years, he re- 
moved from Sheffield to Manchester. There 
was no reason for the change, except that 
he desired it, and a larger field of work 
opened to him. He held the conviction, that 
no minister ought to remain in a parish more 
than ten years. At the end of that period, 
he had probably said about all he had got to 
say, and had come to realize how easily 
familiarity, even with good things, may 
breed contempt. Mr. Herford had a whole- 
some dread of being tolerated by his congre- 
gation. He must lead them or leave them. 
To be regarded as a spent force, or an inter- 
esting invalid, or a helpless incumbrance, was 
not to his taste, although at no period of his 
ministerial career was he in danger of being 
one or the other. Mere sentimental consid- 
erations did not weigh with him, either in 
answering a call to the pulpit, or regulating 
the length of his stay in it. There were ex- 
ceptions to his rule, in the case of men of 
commanding ability and of long signal ser- 



34 



Strangeways Free Church. 35 

vice; but on the whole he was right, as the 
average pastorates in any district will bear 
witness. He had seen so many churches 
which might have been strong, dragging on 
at a poor, dying rate, living on past tradi- 
tions or present pretences, and hindered by 
ministerial loiterers, who would have helped 
themselves and their people, if they had re- 
signed their positions and sought new fields 
of work. 

Besides, he was already interested in de- 
nominational enterprises in the metropolis of 
the cotton industry. During his ministry at 
Sheffield he had become one of the four edi- 
tors of The Unitarian Herald, and a co- 
worker with the Rev. J. R. Beard, D. D., 
William Gaskell, M. A., John Wright, B. A., 
on the teaching staff of The Home Mission- 
ary College. In 1864, he took charge of the 
Strangeways Free Church, one of the con- 
ditions of his acceptance of the call being, 
that the seats in the church should be free 
and that the working expenses of the parish 
should depend upon the offertory system. 
There was not much risk in the experiment 
under his ministry. The free pew system 



36 The Home Missionary College. 

was ideally attractive, but its success de- 
pended upon the magnetic influence of the 
minister, and Mr. Herford had the rare gift 
of drawing people to him, and of holding 
them in close religious fellowship. He 
quickly gathered about him a large and ac- 
tive congregation. 

The Home Missionary College, of which 
he was pastoral tutor, was established in 
1854. It was an institution created to meet 
the demands of the Unitarian Church for a 
ministry to the intelligent, thoughtful, and 
inquiring among the industrial classes. It 
was by no means limited to this object, and 
its graduates were not under any personal 
obligation or pledge, not to take charge of 
the older parishes, but the implied purpose 
of the institution was to educate men for 
efficient service in the missionary field. Un- 
like Manchester New College, it bore the 
Unitarian name, and was distinctly denomi- 
national. Without the prestige or traditions 
of so many other colleges, it nevertheless 
undertook to place in the hands of men of 
ability and studious habits the working tools 
of the ministry, which is practically all that 



The Home Missionary College. 37 

any educational institution of the kind can 
do. Its curriculum was not extensive, but 
it opened up fields of study in Biblical learn- 
ing and Christian history, which the student 
under the direction of scholarly tutors, could 
enlarge, as his ability and tastes inclined him. 
Special stress was laid upon diligence and 
accuracy in studies, and upon the practical 
power to use such learning as was necessary 
to the conduct of pulpit and pastoral work. 

Mr. Herford had the direction and super- 
vision of pastoral training. His duty was 
to imbue the students with a thoroughly reli- 
gious spirit, and to fit them for entering sym- 
pathetically and helpfully into the lives of all 
to whom they were expected to minister. 
Book-learning needed to be supplemented by 
a discriminating and prudent study of the 
arts of helpfulness, outside the pulpit, so he 
took the students every week into the slums 
of Salford, where they made house to house 
visitations, and tried their power to carry 
instruction and comfort to the humble poor. 
This work was purely religious. Alms were 
rarely distributed. The message they had to 
carry was the old, old story of Jesus and his 



38 Sergeant Brett's Keys. 

Gospel. The visiting over, the students met, 
for some years in the rooms in Marsden 
street, and afterwards in the more commo- 
dious quarters provided in Memorial Hall, 
Albert Square, a building erected to the 
memory of the ejected Nonconformist minis- 
ters of 1662, where reports were presented, 
and plans projected, for further and better 
work. It was in this method of ministerial 
training that Mr. Herford made large use of 
tracts, written specially for poor people, and 
bearing upon their trials and needs. Among 
them was a series, particularly interesting 
and helpful, entitled "Home Pages," pre- 
pared in i860, during his ministry in Shef- 
field. His duties as editor and tutor did not 
interfere with his professional tasks, or with 
the demands made upon him for services to 
the denomination, which were both numer- 
ous and exacting, and were always met with 
ready cheerfulness. Public events still con- 
tinued to invite his clear word. 

In 1867, an incident in connection with the 
Fenian movement brought out one of his 
most striking and telling sermons, entitled 
"Sergeant Brett's Keys." An attempt was 



Sergeant Brett's Keys. 39 

made by a section of the Fenian brotherhood 
to liberate political prisoners on their way 
from a Manchester jail, situated in the sub- 
urbs, to the Court in Strangeways. The van 
containing prisoners was stopped under the 
railway arch, in Oxford street, by armed 
men, who demanded of the officer inside, the 
keys of the door. Sergeant Brett refused to 
give up the keys, and was killed by a shot 
through the keyhole. The conspirators were 
captured, tried, and five of them were hung 
for murder. Brett's courage was made the 
subject of a sermon at the church in Strange- 
ways, a vigorous commendation of the hero- 
ism in humble life, which did not hesitate to 
face death in the discharge of duty. Such is 
the irony of fate, however, that the hero is 
almost forgotten, while the murderers are 
enrolled on the list of Irish martyrs. 



Chicago, 1875. 

In 1875, tired with incessant labours, and 
needing the rest which comes of change, Mr. 
Herford accepted a call to Chicago, in the 
United States, and thither he went with his 
family, not, as we may be sure, without a 
pang at leaving behind him a large circle of 
faithful and loving friends, to live among 
strangers, and amid circumstances he could 
not forecast. On the advice of their friend, 
the Rev. Robert Collyer, then minister of 
Unity Church, Chicago, the congregation of 
the Church of the Messiah invited Mr. Her- 
ford, first of all, to accept a temporary en- 
gagement for three months, that the two 
might become mutually acquainted, and then 
finally an engagement as permanent pastor. 
The prospect was attractive, although the 
generous offer of the parish left some room 
for uncertainty as to financial success. Min- 
ister and people were, however, fully pre- 
pared to enter upon the venture. 

In his letter of acceptance, Mr. Herford 
reveals his state of mind in respect to this 



40 



The Church of the Messiah, 41 



migration from the provincialism of Man- 
chester to the cosmopolitanism of Chicago. 
Neither he nor his wife could enter upon the 
new compact, without a clear understanding, 
that if things did not turn out according to 
their expectations, they should be at liberty, 
without reproach, to retrace their steps. He 
writes from Manchester, October 12th, 1875, 
in reply to a cordial and unanimous invita- 
tion, as follows : 

My dear friends: 

I received a week ago the invitation which 
you transmitted to me on behalf of the Church 
of the Messiah, Chicago. I thank you for the 
very warm and cordial terms both towards my- 
self and towards my family, in which it is 
conveyed, and am glad to be able to reply, that 
after most anxious thought, I have resolved to 
accept it. 

You will readily understand that one great 
difficulty to be gotten over has been the hesita- 
tion of my dear wife to leave our own country, 
and all our old friends, and so strong has been 
this hesitation, and not I think unreasonably, 
that I feel bound to comply with her desire, 
that I should couple my acceptance of your 
invitation with the distinct understanding that 
should we at the end of six years think it better 
to return to England, we shall be free to do 
so without the least feeling, on the part of the 



42 



Chicago. 



congregation, that so early a return is unrea- 
sonable or unfair. I do not, of course, mean 
to bind either you or myself by this, to a six 
years' engagement, but I feel that such an 
effort as you are making can only be made in 
faith, that I will stop with you for a fair period 
of work, and, therefore, I feel it best, to put it 
clearly to you, how limited that period may 
perhaps be. 

One other condition I feel obliged to make. 
You are aware how closely I have been identi- 
fied with the open church movement. Now I 
saw, while among you, that circumstances are 
so different in America from England, that 
it would be foolish to insist upon your church 
doing what was the sole condition of my going 
to my present congregation, namely, adopting 
the open pew system entirely, and depending 
exclusively upon the offertory. I shall be 
quite willing, therefore, to go on with morning 
service in the way you have been accustomed 
to, but I think I may not unreasonably ask 
that for the evening service only, the congrega- 
tion shall go heartily with me, in a fair if only 
partial trial of the open church plan. The de- 
tails of carrying it out I can better explain in 
a less formal communication, to the trustees, 
the only essential thing being, that the seats 
should be rented for the morning service only, 
and be absolutely free (and not merely thrown 
open on sufferance) for the evening service, 
with an offertory (collection) each evening. 

In case it be thought that this limitation of 



The Church of the Messiah. 43 



ownership will somewhat lessen the renting 
value of the seats, and so weaken the source 
to which the trustees look for raising the ex- 
penses of the church, I should be willing to 
accept a somewhat smaller guaranteed income 
than that you generously offer, to be supple- 
mented by an agreed upon proportion of the 
amounts raised by offertory. I believe that by 
this plan the financial position of your church 
will be strengthened, but of that I am willing 
to take the risk, being sure at any rate, that 
this plan will afford best scope for gathering 
in outsiders, and making our church services 
attractive to the poor as well as to the rich. 
How far, dear friends, even with all the ad- 
vantages of the plan, which would give me 
most hope of success, I may be able to do such 
a work, as you have hope for, I know not ; but 
I am willing to try and will do my best. I 
have told my people here, in my letter of resig- 
nation, that I regard the post to which you call 
me, as one of the most important in our 
church, yet its very importance makes it a 
more anxious responsibility to undertake it. 
One thing, however, encourages me, namely, 
that sentence in your letter, in which you say, 
"The people of the Church of the Messiah will 
all heartily unite in active cooperation with 
you in doing the work for which a Unita- 
rian Church is organized." With a people 
who mean that, with a common-sense living 
faith, a free pulpit, and a church cordially open- 
ing its doors to rich and poor, I would not 
be afraid to cast my lot anywhere in God's 



44 



Chicago. 



earth. And so, in the faith that your people 
do mean that, and deeply feeling your friendly 
confidence in me, I accept your call with a 
glad and willing heart. 

Ever faithfully yours, 

Brooke Herford. 

There was very much in Western life that 
was congenial to the minister of the Church 
of the Messiah. Its vigor and vitality, its 
quickness of apprehension, and boldness of 
enterprise, and its generous willingness to 
lend a hand in the work of progressive civili- 
zation won his effection. He often spoke 
with delight of the breezy frankness of the 
people. Nothing daunted them, nothing 
seemed too great for them. Difficulties 
which would stagger a slower people were 
easily brushed aside, and beneath their rest- 
less bounding activity was a serene staying 
power for good. Moreover, they were a 
sociable set, given to hospitality, capable of 
being led by anyone in whom they had con- 
fidence, but hard to drive, and intolerant of 
weakness and incapacity. It is not surpris- 
ing, therefore, that Mr. Herford enjoyed his 
ministry in Chicago, and came to hold a high 
opinion of the Western people, not merely 



The Church of the Messiah. 45 

for their commercial enterprise, but also for 
their educational ideals and ambitions. To 
him they were neither very wild nor very 
woolly, but full of the native strength and 
eager vitality of a race capable of high things 
and conscious of a great future. He laboured 
among them in the busy city, and in mission- 
ary work throughout the Middle West, for 
more than six years, taking his part in the 
noble effort to impress upon the new civiliza- 
tion, so fraught with destiny to the whole 
country, the need and worth of a free and 
practical Christianity. No one, of all the 
Western preachers, realized more than he, 
the stupendous task of presenting the truths 
and principles of religion to a mixed and 
migratory population bent largely upon 
worldly success, and often disposed in a piti- 
able fashion to get on without organized re- 
ligion, or with the smallest pretence of it. 

At last, after fruitful effort, it dawned 
upon him, that he had come into that par- 
ticular field a few years too late. A minis- 
try in Chicago called for the fresh vigour of 
early manhood, the pliability and elasticity 
of an age unwarped by fixed prejudices and 



4 6 



Chicago. 



inflexible habits, and a speed of living in- 
compatible with the natural slowness that 
comes with years. Once more he sighed for 
another change, and had in mind a return to 
England, when an urgent invitation reached 
him to fill the vacant pulpit at Arlington 
Street Church, Boston. The following letter 
of resignation indicates his condition at this 
time : 

April 21 st, 1882. 
To the Trustees and Congregaton of the First 
Unitarian Society, Church of the Messiah, 
Chicago. 
My dear friends : 

You are aware that I recently received a call 
from the Arlington Street Congregation in 
Boston. After much earnest and anxious 
thought, I have come to the conclusion that I 
must accept it, and I have therefore to tender 
to you the resignation of my ministry here. 

In terminating a connection, which has been 
throughout without break or jar, and in which 
I have found great interest and happiness, I 
owe you something more than the mere an- 
nouncement of a proposed change. 

May I remind you that when I accepted your 
own "call," I was so conscious of a doubt 
whether this could be a permanent settlement, 
that I made the express proviso, that at the 
end of six years, if I felt it best to leave, I 
should be free to do so, without any imputa- 



Resignation. 



47 



tion of suddenness, or unreasonableness. 
Those six years are more than past. It is, 
indeed, over seven years, since my ministry 
amongst you really commenced ; for though my 
previous visit in 1875 was nominally only for 
three months' "supply," yet your reception of 
me was such, that I felt myself something 
more than a casual visitor, my three months' 
engagement was prolonged to the close of the 
church season, and when I brought over my 
family in January, 1876, it was rather for a 
renewal than the commencement of my min- 
istry here. 

These seven years have been years of rare 
invigoration and interest to me, and touched 
from the beginning by a wealth of kindly feel- 
ing, which make the thought of parting very 
painful, and yet, I think that it is best. 

The causes which have led me to this deci- 
sion are two: — the one personal, the other 
relating to the character of the work. 

The first is this : I hardly reckoned upon the 
strain of heart and feeling that it would be to 
live permanently so far from my old friends 
and kindred. And of late the longing has 
kept increasing rather than lessening, to be 
either among them again, or at any rate a 
little nearer within reach of quicker and more 
frequent communication. 

The second cause relates to the work, and 
my power of doing it. The ministry of re- 
ligion, in this eager, absorbed Western life, re- 
quires much the same alertness, electric energy, 
and readiness for strain and tension, as does 



B. H. IV 



48 



Resignation. 



Western business. To do his best work, a 
man should come here while his mental limbs 
still have the spring and flexibility of youth, 
be able to become a thorough Westerner in 
feeling and sympathy, and be quick to throw 
himself into, initiate, and lead new plans of 
work. Now, the simple fact is, that for all 
this, I came here about fifteen years too old. 
I have tried not to let you find it out; I hope 
that to some extent I have succeeded, but it 
is none the less true, and in a very few years 
at most, you would perceive it. I believe, 
therefore, that I can best lay out my life and 
power henceforth, in a ministry more like that 
from which you called me, and into which I 
have grown through twenty-five years. 

I had not sought for this change. I have 
not sought for any change. If I could choose, 
I would rather such an opening had been de- 
ferred, that I might have worked on among 
you here for two or three years more. But 
within a few months of its becoming clear to 
me, that I must not try to settle down here for 
life, came this urgent invitation to Boston. 
It seems to me, on the whole, of all opportuni- 
ties that have come to me, or are likely to 
come, the most eligible and hopeful ; and, as 
I cannot help feeling that if I am ever to leave, 
there could hardly be a time when the Church 
of the Messiah could better stand a change, 
than now, I think it best to accept this invita- 
tion. 

I have, therefore, to resign my trust into 
your hands. If I do not say more, it is 



Resignation. 49 



because my gratitude for my own past, and my 
hope for your future are too deep and tender, 
to be expressed in such a communication. 

With regard to the time at which my resig- 
nation should take effect, I leave it entirely to 
the society; simply saying that when such a 
separation has to be, it is not well for either 
party, for it to be very long deferred. 

Faithfully yours, 

Brooke Herford. 

The resignation was accepted, to take 
effect on the thirty-first day of July follow- 
ing. 



Boston, 1882. 

The removal from Chicago to Boston was 
fortunate, both for Mr. Herford and the 
Arlington Street Church, he finding in the 
new sphere, one of the great opportunities 
of a lifetime, and the church securing just 
the man it needed, to restore it to the posi- 
tion which it had held for generations, but 
from which, owing to the vicissitudes of all 
parishes, great or small, it had somewhat de- 
clined. The religious atmosphere of Boston 
Unitarianism was eminently prudent and 
conservative, and charged with pride of the 
days of Channing and Parker and Gannett, 
but beginning to show the first symptoms of 
spiritual numbness and torpid inactivity, 
from which it has hardly yet recovered. 
A new star was rising above the horizon, of 
unusual brilliancy, leading many of the more 
timid and distrustful members of the Unita- 
rian churches into the Episcopalian enclo- 
sure. Phillips Brooks was in the zenith of 
his power and fame. A great man and a 
great preacher, he was drawing crowds to 



50 



Boston. 



51 



Trinity Church, and holding them by his 
splendid personality, and breezy freedom, 
and religious fervour. His influence was felt 
on every hand, but chiefly in the ranks of 
liberalism. Inside the Unitarian churches, 
the Emersonian gospel of individuality, so 
lofty and inspiring and helpful in every di- 
rection, except in that of organized life in 
the church, was winning its way, and the zeal 
of Drs. Bellows and James Freeman Clarke 
was unable to withstand its somewhat dis- 
integrating tendencies. It was giving new 
strength to individual faith, but no strength 
to the organization of that faith, for ecclesi- 
astical purposes. Men felt themselves lifted 
into a diviner air by the Concord seer, but 
the expansion was toward higher altitudes, 
rather than towards close and active fellow- 
ship for practical ends, such as those which 
create churches, and strengthen them. Em- 
erson was deeply religious, but it was the 
religion of solitude and seclusion, and not 
of the church and of the congregation, the 
religion that worships beneath the stars and 
pines, and not the faith that communes with 
itself, only that it may the more effectively 



52 



Boston. 



stand in close and helpful relations with men 
and women steeled in sin and wretchedness. 
And so the spirit of Emerson made more 
transcendentalists than missionaries, more 
soliloquists, and prophets on their own ac- 
count, than Christian workers. Under its 
spell the liberal ministers placed such empha- 
sis on self-development and self-reliance, that 
they turned a noble truth into a hurtful exag- 
geration. In his Divinity School Address, 
which had so powerful an influence upon the 
religious thought of the time, Emerson broke 
away from traditions and history, and did 
scant justice to the instinct of hero-worship, 
which lies at the root of all religion, and 
especially of the religion of Jesus. In con- 
demning what he called the noxious exag- 
geration of the person of Jesus, he uncon- 
sciously fell into the opposite exaggeration 
of asserting that "the soul knows no per- 
sons." No better example could surely be 
found of the falsehood of extremes. It 
would have been much nearer the truth to 
have said, the soul knows nothing but per- 
sons. Religion in all its aspects and phases 
is a personal relationship. It is the worship 



Arlington Street Church. 53 

of a person, the federation of persons, and 
the love and service of persons. The reli- 
gion that revolves around self, as a centre, 
even though it be the higher self, is a glori- 
ous illusion. 

Be this as it may, at the time Mr. Herford 
settled at Arlington Street Church, what was 
called the Emerson cult was at its height. It 
did not openly discourage organized relig- 
ious fellowship, but made it difficult, if not 
impossible. The churchly habit and congre- 
gational worship were slack, and in some in- 
stances every characteristic of well-defined 
Christian conviction was "disembowelled," 
and religion was lost in a "cadaverous ab- 
straction." The older churches suffered less 
than others from this tendency to universal- 
ize everything. They still clung to liberal 
Christianity, and retained the few rites of 
the primitive faith, such as baptism and the 
Lord's Supper. The field in which Channing 
and Gannett had laboured so long and to 
such purpose was, therefore, eminently con- 
genial to Mr. Herford. He found an at- 
mosphere in which he could gladly preach 
and labour. Around him were gathered a 



54 



The Vesper Service. 



people both able and willing to sustain his 
efforts, and to make his ministry a delight. 
They were rich, cultivated, and devout, and 
stood ready to carry out his plans for the 
development of the life of the church. The 
lines had indeed fallen to him in pleasant 
places, and he had a goodly heritage. Slowly 
the congregation grew in strength and relig- 
ious enthusiasm, and under his leadership 
Arlington Street Church became one of the 
best attended and most popular churches in 
the city. Its philanthropies and charities mul- 
tiplied, while its annual contribution to the 
American Unitarian Association was largely 
augmented. The proprietary principle upon 
which the pews were bought and sold was 
not to his liking; indeed, he hated the sys- 
tem with a perfect hatred, alike for its com- 
mercialism, and its secularizing effect upon 
church affairs; but the compromise brought 
about in the Church of the Messiah in Chi- 
cago, was permissible and workable in Bos- 
ton. With the consent of the Prudential 
Committee, a vesper service was arranged, at 
which seat-owners temporarily relinquished 
their property rights, and all the seats were 



The Vesper Service. 55 

free. This was a generous concession, and 
Mr. Herford and the general public warmly 
appreciated it. The services on Sunday 
afternoon were crowded, not less for their 
religious quality, than for the marked excel- 
lence of the music, both instrumental and 
vocal. Long before four o'clock, the hour 
at which the service began, the steps leading 
to the church were crowded, and by the time 
the minister reached his pulpit, not only were 
all the seats filled, but the steps on both sides 
of the pulpit were occupied. It was a sight 
to gladden the eyes and cheer the heart of 
any minister. Before him were about a 
thousand people, of all creeds and no creed, 
from many a scene of toil and care and sor- 
row, to whom a simple, thoughtful, impres- 
sive service was a weekly benediction. The 
.majority were attracted by the preacher and 
the devotional service ; some came to hear the 
singing, and just before the sermon, dis- 
turbed the quiet of worship by retiring from 
the church, not a little to the annoyance of 
everybody except themselves. On one occa- 
sion, Mr. Herford rebuked them, by saying, 
"Let us suspend our service for a moment, 



56 Arlington Street Church. 

until those children who cannot sit for an 
hour have left the church." The services 
were conducted from the beginning of Octo- 
ber to the second Sunday in May, and the 
Arlington street vesper service is still a pop- 
ular institution. Who can estimate the far- 
reaching influence of these services, carried 
on for years, at great labour and expense, for 
the spiritual help of thousands, who are too 
often credited with no interest in religion? 
As Mr. Herford's successor, I had special 
opportunities of studying the character of 
the people reached by the vesper services, and 
had frequent personal testimony as to their 
religious worth, and I am convinced that 
thousands of the unchurched not only made 
Arlington Street Church their spiritual 
home, but called upon its minister for help 
and sympathy, in life's saddest emergencies. 

The ministry of a great city church is, 
however, no sinecure. On the contrary, it 
makes excessive demands upon the physical 
and nervous energy of the preacher. No one 
can tell, better than a minister, who has spent 
a lifetime in it, what drafts it makes upon his 
vitality. Work and worry and incessant care 



Arlington Street Church. 57 



imperceptibly tell their tale, either in periodi- 
cal exhaustion, or in confirmed nervous irri- 
tability, from which there is no permanent 
escape. Not only in the mental effort of 
preparing so many sermons, but still more in 
the earnest and effective delivery of them, is 
there a regular loss of nervous force, and 
neither the preacher nor his friends can tell 
what is happening, until some alarming 
symptom manifests itself, and the seemingly 
strong man is forced to retire from the pro- 
fession, or seek a field of lighter labour. 

The congregation at Arlington Street 
Church consisted almost entirely of people 
with summer homes, or with the means of 
taking 4 long vacation. No sooner did early 
summer appear, than they hied away to Na- 
hant, or Bar Harbor, or Manchester-by-the- 
Sea, or Pride's Crossing, or to Europe, and 
the parish was deserted. The church was, 
therefore, closed from the second Sunday in 
June to the last Sunday in September, during 
which time the minister and his family 
sought rest and change in the Old World, or 
in some seaside resort on the coasts of 
Massachusetts and Maine. In 1886, Mrs. 



5 8 Tower Hill, Way land. 

Herford bought the old Draper Homestead 
at Tower Hill, near Wayland, Mass., as a 
holiday resort for her family. It was a small 
estate of about ten acres, picturesquely situ- 
ated, and within easy access to Lincoln, Con- 
cord and Boston, a quiet old place in which 
a tired man might take his ease, "far from 
the madding crowd." No one can tell, ex- 
cept those who were privileged to visit the 
family, off duty, how much the possession 
of a little home, which they could call their 
own, meant to them. Its cozy breakfast- 
room with vines and flowers hanging out- 
side the windows, where the parents and 
children met to open the day with prayer, so 
devout and tender, that a stranger could 
hardly listen to it without tears; the larger 
low-roofed parlour, where neighbours and 
friends so often congregated in the evening 
for intellectual refreshment and social inter- 
course; even the upper stories of the old 
house which the children nicknamed "pov- 
erty flats," were all invested with a peculiar 
charm. Here, when not with his relatives 
and friends in England, Mr. Herford spent 
his summers. Around him, only a few 



The Old Placed 59 



miles away, were parishioners who did what 
they could to make his stay in the country a 
delight. One sent him a cow, and another 
a horse, loaning them for the season, and 
taking them back again in the autumn. He 
was proud of his garden and orchard. Let- 
tuce and peas and apples were enhanced in 
value, because his own hand had planted or 
plucked them, and they grew on his ground. 
He loved to drive through the woods, and 
by the river, and when friends from Eng- 
land dropped in to see him, as they frequent- 
ly did, he would take them to the towns and 
places of historic interest, in the neighbour- 
hood, and retail to them on the way, many 
an interesting and amusing story. He had 
a nimble wit, and lively fancy, and in play- 
ful moods humour lit up his countenance 
with whole-souled mirth and laughter. It 
was the humour that came not by effort, 
but bubbled naturally and gleefully from a 
cheerful and merry heart. 

But, the vacation was not all rest and 
recreation. He could not entirely throw 
aside his plans of work for the ensuing win- 
ter. When in the right mood he wrote new 



60 American Unitarian Association. 

sermons, or re-wrote old ones, and laid out 
schemes of thought and enterprise to be tak- 
en up on his return to Boston. Nothing 
was left to chance, and -in his leisure, he nev- 
er quite lost sight of the tasks which lay be- 
fore him, and to which his heart was firmly 
wedded. 

In 1889, seven years after his settlement 
in Boston, he became a director of the 
American Unitarian Association. His 
capacity for business, and his long exper- 
ience in denominational enterprises made him 
a very desirable acquisition to the Board, 
while his zeal for church extension was un- 
questioned. Always ready to give help to 
causes which held a living chance, he was 
apt to turn a deaf ear to perpetual pension- 
ers with no hope of progress. He had not 
any sentiment to waste on ventures which 
had proved to be mistakes, and which an- 
nually drained the denomination of its finan- 
cial resources, to no purpose. Knowing 
something of the difficulty of raising money 
for religious efforts, he was disposed to be 
severely prudent in its disbursement, a very 
business-like proceeding, but not popular. 



American Unitarian Association. 61 

He wanted every dollar put out to the best 
advantage, and while not over-exacting or 
impatient of results, he always insisted upon 
seeing them. On committee, Mr. Herford 
was a forceful and energetic man, persistent 
in every legitimate effort to carry his points, 
but able to take failure to do so, with good 
nature, and without the least resentment. 
When his own way of doing anything did 
not commend itself to others, he did not re- 
tire and sulk in his tent, but gave his loyal 
support to the men and measures with which 
he had been in conflict, so free was he, in all 
that he did, from professional jealousy or 
ill-will. From 1889 to 1892 he was an ac- 
tive member of the Board, and took a promi- 
nent part in shaping its policy. He was al- 
so an officer of "The National Conference 
of Unitarian and other Christian Churches" 
and originated the Church Building Loan 
Fund. 

The Unitarian Denomination as a feder- 
ation of independent churches has never 
been quite sure as to its basis of fellowship. 
Its special mission has not been definite- 
ly staked out. Intended at the outset, to 



62 



Faith and Freedom. 



be a representative body of independent 
communities held together by convictions 
and principles, it was well within Christian 
lines, accepted the leadership of Jesus, and 
conserved the institutions of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper; but from the first, it also 
held within itself the seeds of its own weak- 
ness as a denomination. Christianity is not 
a church without limitations, nor is the New 
Testament a colourless charter. The Father- 
hood of God, the leadership of Jesus, the 
love of all men as brethren, the supremacy 
of righteousness, the inculcation of graces 
which are unique, and belief in personal im- 
mortality, are incompatible with theories 
which run counter to them, and contradict 
them altogether. When, therefore, an at- 
tempt was made to efface the characteristic 
lines of historic Christianity, and to open the 
doors of a Christian community, uninvited, 
to every ethical or religious movement, in 
obedience to an abstract idea of liberty and 
inclusiveness, it was natural that those to 
whom the name and reality of the church of 
Christ were identical and precious, should 
offer stout resistance. They were not hos- 



"The Unitarian" 



63 



tile to such movements, but were in no mood 
to be unequally yoked with them, and to re- 
linquish the Christian name at their bidding. 
The cause of liberal Christianity as repre- 
sented by the Unitarian churches, was in 
jeopardy. A serious split was threatened, 
which only the prudence and determination 
of leaders on both sides could avert. Mr. 
Herford entered spiritedly into the contro- 
versy, and in conjunction with the Rev. J. 
T. Sunderland, started a monthly magazine 
called, "The Unitarian," in January, 1886. 
The July number for that year, sets forth his 
view of the situation. He wrote : 

"The fact is, there are a few of our Western 
ministers, who have got it into their heads that 
for Unitarians to stand avowedly for Chris- 
tianity, or even for the worship of God, is the 
setting up of a creed. So they have been 
steadily working to divest our Western 
churches and conferences of any distinctively 
and necessarily religious character. They 
themselves, for the most part, are men of 
deeply religious nature, men who would be 
sure to lead their own personal work into a 
religious direction, even if it were only organ- 
ized in the name of the multiplication table; 
and, impressed by this, many people have 
failed to see how false, misleading, and mis- 



B. H. 



V 



64 



"The Unitarian." 



chievous such a non-religious attitude would 
be for our work at large." 

The object of the new magazine was 
to form public opinion in the Unitarian 
churches, particularly in the West, in favour 
of the existing policy, and against the new 
departure. 

Mr. Herford's views on this question are 
stated at greater length in a sermon en- 
titled "Christianity in Presence of Modern 
Criticism," in which he says : 

"Here is the essence of the whole matter. 
Our best life is not that which we live alone, 
or which each age lives alone. Our best life 
is that in which we draw together, and in 
which we link ourselves, and lose ourselves, in 
the great fellowship of the ages. And still, 
after all the keenest proving and criticism of 
our time, that great fellowship which began 
in Christ, and still continues in his name, 
stands as the best. Of course, it is not all it 
might be, and one great part of our work in 
holding it, is to clear away that which is un- 
worthy ! In our very pleading for Christianity, 
we have to put men away from the Christ of 
the creeds, and back to the greater Christ of 
the Gospels ! There is our strength — to speak 
the ancient word of simpler truth, not just as 
ours, but his, and in his name. I love that 
name — I believe it is still the strongest name 



Good Friday at the Old South. 65 

on earth to rally men to the simplest faith and 
the most practical righteousness ! I would 
cherish it in our working, I would cherish it 
even in our praying. It is no talisman to give 
some mystic efficiency either to the prayer, or 
to the work ; but it is the strong, great name, 
that links us with the noblest memories of the 
past, and the noblest prophecies of the future." 

Although he never disguised his Unitar- 
ianism, Mr. Herford always stood in sym- 
pathetic relations with liberal orthodoxy. 
He was ever ready to bring about closer re- 
lations between the right and left wings of 
Congregationalism, and when the Rev. 
George A. Gordon, D. D., of the Old South 
Church, in Copley Square, established a 
Union Service on Good Friday evening in 
which Episcopalian, Unitarian, Baptist and 
Congregational ministers took part, he glad- 
ly threw in his lot with the liberal movement, 
and invited his congregation to do the same. 
The service was a remarkable illustration of 
the spiritual unity beneath all differences, on 
an occasion when divisions might easily have 
been very pronounced, and whether judged 
from the variety on the pulpit platform, or 
the divergencies of thought represented in 



66 U niversity Preacher. 

the crowded congregation, it was a sign and 
promise of the breadth and catholicity, 
which will one day bring into closer fellow- 
ship those who have been too long separated, 
to their mutual hurt, by denominational nar- 
rowness and prejudice. 

In 1890, Mr. Herford was invited by the 
President and Fellows of Harvard Uni- 
versity to become one of the University 
preachers. His character, together with 
his lucid and interesting way of presenting 
religious truth, made him a successful 
preacher to young men. He thoroughly 
understood their peculiar needs and difficul- 
ties, and was eminently approachable. His 
honest frankness and transparent sincerity 
led them to believe in him, and to feel that 
they might go to him, and be sure of wise 
counsel and sympathy. They recognized 
his strength, and his irreproachable in- 
tegrity, and were drawn to him purely on his 
merits. The great body of students at 
American Universities, whatever else they 
may or may not be, are ardent admirers of 
ability and courage. Quick to discern 
where weakness lies, and merciless in their 



Honorary Degree. 67 

judgment of simulation and pretence, they 
are loyal to leaders who can lead, and to 
men who by the magnetism of a strong per- 
sonality get a firm grip of them. They are 
apt to be unsparing critics or sworn friends. 
In this spirit, they welcomed Mr. Herford 
as in larger degree they did Andrew P. Pea- 
body, and Phillips Brooks, and other wise 
and good men, who made University preach- 
ing not only famous, but most helpful and 
effective. He enjoyed a well-merited pop- 
ularity at the University, and in return gave 
diligent and enthusiastic service to the young 
men, whose characters he sought to mould 
to a manly pattern, in all that concerned 
their religious growth. It was his duty, in 
rotation with other preachers for the year, 
to conduct morning prayers at Appleton 
Chapel, and to preach on occasion, from 
1890 to 1892. 

At the close of his term, he received the 
honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, as 
a mark of the esteem, in which his services 
were held by the University authorities, and 
in appreciation of his life-long devotion to 
the cause of Liberal Christianity. The hon- 



68 His Wife's Sickness. 

our was well-deserved, and of all the re- 
wards which came to him, this gave him the 
deepest pleasure and satisfaction, not as a 
worthless titular ornament, but as an as- 
surance that his earnest labours in the cause 
of education and religion, in a distinguished 
position, had met with success. 

For several years, it had been apparent to 
his family and near friends, that his own 
health, and that of his dear wife were fail- 
ing. Mrs. Herford, who had stood by him 
through all the years of their married life, 
as the typical wife and mother, was passing 
through a critical sickness, to which a few 
years later she was to succumb. Her hus- 
band watched her condition with tender so- 
licitude until the idea grew upon him, that 
the time had come to make the last change 
of ministry. His life in America, covering 
sixteen years of strenuous toil, was nearing 
a close. He could look behind with a 
sweet contentment which comes to few men 
in his profession, and forward to several 
years of quieter but not less fruitful effort 
in his native land, and among his old friends. 
Who could blame him, if, after a long exile, 



The Call to London. 69 

full of advantage and pleasure though it 
was, he longed to spend his remaining years, 
wnere his life began, and eventually to finish 
his career, and sleep with his fathers? I 
well remember one bright sunny morning in 
the month of August, 1891, sitting with him 
on the piazza of his summer home in Way- 
land, when he opened the secret of the forth- 
coming change, by handing to me the letter 
he had received from the congregation of 
the Rosselyn-Hill chapel, Hampstead, Lon- 
don, which contained a call to succeed Dr. 
Sadler. The question of going or staying 
was freely discussed. He was fully sensi- 
ble of the great sacrifices he was about to 
make, and spoke gratefully and tenderly of 
his happy life in America; but it was easy 
to see that the die was cast, and he was bent 
upon severing ties, which were very strong 
and dear to him, in obedience to what, in 
no conventional sense, he considered a clear 
call. He looked upon the separation as a 
trying ordeal, most of all the breaking away 
from his parish in Arlington street, and from 
his brother ministers in Boston. It would 
have suited his mood, if he could have es- 



70 



The Decision. 



caped all questionings and explanations, so 
hard did it seem to him to justify on any 
grounds, except personal ones, the inevitable 
breach. It is needless to say, that decided 
efforts were made to retain him. In the 
course of his ministry in Boston, nearly 
everything had run smoothly. No bolts 
from the blue had struck him in an evil 
hour to mar his happiness. He had steered 
clear of pitfalls and snares, and had not 
made any enemies of a malicious and viru- 
lent type. No one was jealous of his fame, 
or coveted his position. He was able to re- 
tire amid expressions of almost universal re- 
gret, and to leave behind him only pleasant 
memories. Pending the final settlement of 
his release, an influential body of his parish- 
ioners, met him in conference, and tried to 
shake his determination, and came very near 
doing it. The late Mr. William Goodwin 
Russell, the leader of the Bar in Boston, an 
able and loyal friend, without guile and with- 
out prejudice, a man of judicial temper and 
a devoted member of Arlington Street 
Church, acted as spokesman for his col- 
leagues. His very forcible and persuasive 



The Decision. 



7i 



appeal almost proved irresistible, and Dr. 
Herford told me afterwards, that at one 
point in the address, his purpose was so shak- 
en, that he was glad to get away from the 
meeting. The young ministers of the dis- 
trict, who even when they did not agree with 
him cherished a deep respect for him, ap- 
proached him by deputation with the request 
that he would remain with them, but his 
mind was thoroughly made up, and since it 
seemed best to him, that he should return to 
England, the time to go was when his flag 
was flying at the mast. 



London, 1892. 

He sailed from Boston in the Cunard 5*. 
5. Cephalonia, in January, 1892, to take up 
his duties at Hampstead. Had his medical 
adviser been consulted at this time, he would 
probably have prescribed a long rest, but 
rest which appeared to look like retirement, 
never entered into Dr. Herford's pro- 
gramme. He would not admit that he 
was growing old, or that his natural strength 
was abating, but took up his work in Lon- 
don, with his usual courage and persever- 
ence. He no sooner settled there, than he 
projected schemes of denominational en- 
terprise, and set about enlarging the re- 
sources of the British and Foreign Unitarian 
Association. Subscribers were invited to 
double their subscriptions, and a new stim- 
ulus was given to forward movements. Un- 
like some of his English brethren, he was 
not a leader of thought, or a plodder in the 
fields of Biblical scholarship, but he was a 
captain of religious industry, and an inde- 
fatigable promoter of activity along eccle- 



72 



Hard at Work Again. 73 

siastical lines. He went hither and thither, 
preaching and lecturing, awakening the 
sleepers, and re-animating the dead, and try- 
ing not always successfully, to galvanize into 
energetic vigour the quiescence of the 
English churches. A religious enthusiast 
all his life, he could not be anything else, so 
long as breath remained in his body. 

In 1898, he was elected President of the 
British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 
having previously preached the anniversary 
sermon of the Association in 1864, and again 
in 1885. He was also chosen on the com- 
mittee of Manchester New College, Ox- 
ford. Honours of every kind were heaped 
upon him, which he never sought, but which 
came to him like benedictions on a well-spent 
life. In 1897, he represented the Unitarians 
at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, and 
stood with the ministers of all denominations 
on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral as the 
Royal cortege passed into the edifice for 
the Thanksgiving service. 

In 1895, he returned to America, to visit 
his friends and to deliver the Dudleian lec- 
ture at Harvard University, a lecture on 



74 



Re-visits America. 



Catholicism, the third of a series of four 
prescribed by Judge Dudley. He preached 
at Arlington Street Church, and attended a 
reception given at my house, at which his 
friends and parishioners had an opportunity 
of greeting their old minister. Three years 
before, he had cabled his warm congratula- 
tions to them, and had written a cordial let- 
ter to his successor, showing that his heart 
was still deeply concerned in the welfare and 
prosperity of the church. 

My last sight of him, and of his wife, was 
in 1899, in London, and I was struck with 
his changed appearance. His face was 
worn, his head shook, and his gait was un- 
certain. As he took my arm, one morning, 
and led me to his church, to see the beautiful 
stained glass windows, designed by Burne 
Jones, I could not keep my eyes off him, and 
in my heart was a painful feeling, that his 
work was done. Just then, my own way 
was not clear. Broken in health and spirits. 
I tried to hide my condition from him; but 
by quick intuition, he divined my ailment, 
and gave me such comfort and courage, as 
he alone of all my friends could give. 



The Closing Hours. 75 

After this, sad events followed in quick 
succession. First of all, came his wife's 
death, then his retirement from the ministry, 
after fifty years of strenuous and noble ser- 
vice, and finally the stroke, which clouded 
his intellect, and rendered him an almost 
helpless invalid. During his protracted ill- 
ness, with lucid intervals, he was brave and 
cheerful, grateful for yesterday, and confi- 
dent of tomorrow, and when the summons 
came on Sunday evening, December the 
2 1st, 1903, he listens to the old familiar 
hymns sung by his dear ones, sung as they 
had been so often at the close of the Sabbath 
day, and silently 'Thro' the gates that bar 
the distance comes a gleam of what is 
higher." 

The funeral service was held on Wednes- 
day, the 24th of December, 1903, in Rosslyn 
Hill Chapel, Hampstead, and was conducted 
by his ministerial friends. The body was' 
cremated on the following day, and his ashes 
were placed beside those of his wife, in the 
burial ground of the little chapel at Hale, 
Cheshire, where fifty-one years before, the 
young couple had pledged their marriage 



7 6 



Burial. 



vows. The Inquirer of December 26th, 
1903, contains the following brief story of 
the service at Rosslyn Hill Chapel. The 
Chapel, decorated for Christmas, contained 
a large and representative gathering. 

"The three officiating ministers preceded the 
coffin as it was borne into the Chapel, the 
Rev. Henry Gow, B. A., his successor, reciting 
the sentences. He conducted the first part of 
the service, reading Psalm xc, and passages 
from I Corinthians xv. The Rev. J. Estlin 
Carpenter, M. A., then read the Beatitudes, 
and passages of triumphant faith from St. 
Paul, and afterwards offered prayer. The 
Rev. Phillip Wicksteed, M. A., gave an ad- 
dress inspired by deep feeling, and intimate 
knowledge of his friend. The address was 
followed by singing, "Nearer, My God, to 
Thee," the Lord's Prayer, and the Benediction, 
pronounced by Mr. Wicksteed, bringing the 
service to a close. The committal service at 
the crematorium was conducted by Mr. Gow." 

And thus passed into the Sacred Presence, 
his day's work done, one of the great reapers 
in the Lord's vineyard, bearing heavy 
sheaves of garnered corn, and singing as he 
went the glad harvest song of those, who 
join the 

"March of that eternal harmony 
Whereto the worlds beat time." > 



Literary Work. 

Dr. Herford's books grew out of his min- 
istry. The Life of Travers Madge, the 
Story of Religion in England, Sermons of 
Courage and Cheer, The Small End of Great 
Problems, were chips from a minister's 
workshop. They were not so much the re- 
sults of wide research as the original wrest- 
lings of a strong mind with the problems of 
daily experience. The successful minister 
may learn much from others, but he is con- 
tinually brought face to face with questions 
which he must solve in his own fashion. He 
must see with his own eyes, and hear 
with his own ears, and deliver himself, 
not so much of what he has heard, as 
of deep personal convictions. He cannot 
live to any purpose without systematic 
thought, and his themes are drawn from the 
life around him. Life, as he sees it lived by 
those about him, in all its aspects and 
phases, is his great text-book. There he 
finds his subjects, and there his method of 
dealing with them, for the strengthening of 



77 



/S The Story of Religion in England. 

his own faith, and that of those who look 
to him for guidance and help. The knowl- 
edge and experience, the best thoughts and 
practical discoveries of all ages are at his 
service, but not until they are woven into the 
very fibre of his own soul, and become part 
of himself, are they of the slightest use to 
him, in the pulpit or the parish. 

The Story of Religion in England* is an 
interesting narrative of the growth and de- 
velopment of religious life in England, a 
record of wonderful and chequered history. 
Written for young people, it is simply and 
graphically told, with good fidelity, and free- 
dom from prejudice. The facts are mar- 
shalled with discrimination, and are left to 
tell their own tale. An honest attempt is 
made to do justice to conflicting movements, 
in the long struggle for truth and liberty, 
from the "reforms before the Reformation" 
down to the present day. 

Sermons of Courage and Cheer \ is, as the 
title implies, a volume of discourses intended 

*S. S. Association, Essex Hall, London. 
tBritish & Foreign Unitarian Association, Lon- 
don. 



Sermons of Courage and Cheer. 79 

to throw light and significance upon the 
trials and sorrows of life. In this direction, 
Dr. Herford had few equals. He possessed 
the rare faculty of finding a way to hearts, 
not easily opened, of handling perplexities 
and griefs, with a fine touch of healing and 
comfort. Anxieties yielded to his treatment, 
doubts were quenched or silenced, and there 
was an indefinable something in his sympa- 
thetic voice and manner, which soothed 
troubles, and lightened burdens, and lifted 
the despondent and discouraged, from the 
sloughs of despond to transfigured heights. 
Many of his old parishioners, who heard 
these sermons, and were greatly uplifted and 
blessed by them, will be glad to turn to them 
again and again, amid the shadows, for re- 
newed light and leading. 

The Small End of Great Problems* is a 
more ambitious production, in the sense that 
it attempts to deal with intellectual and eth- 
ical enigmas, not as they appear to the log- 
ical athlete, but as they press for solution 
upon the common mind. The problems 

*Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 
1902. 



B. H. 



VI 



80 The Small End of Great Problems. 

which have such a fascination for the phil- 
osopher and scientist, and which tempt the 
profound thinker, through intricate laby- 
rinths of speculation, weigh heavily upon the 
average intelligence. They have fixed their 
roots in life, and no sooner do men enter 
seriously upon the struggle for existence, 
than they are confronted by them. Sickness, 
misfortune, pain, death, fling sombre shad- 
ows upon the sunny landscapes of life, and 
give rise to misgivings and perplexities not 
easily put to rest. The faithful minister, not 
only lies under them himself, but he is in a 
position to witness how heavily they some- 
times hang over the homes of his flock. 
Questions are put to him which he dare not 
ignore. Eyes, wet with tears, appeal to 
him for consolation. Men and women in 
the blind anger of grief, throw scepticisms 
and reproaches right and left, which he must 
answer tenderly and persuasively to the best 
of his ability, and as opportunity may 
prompt. Dr. Herford did not presume, as 
so many ministers do, to offer an explanation 
of all the deep mysteries and tragedies of 
life. He looked them reverently and boldly 



The Small End of Great Problems. 81 

in the face. If he found any light, he re- 
flected it, but when things seemed inexplica- 
ble, he did not hesitate to say so, and to sug- 
gest patience. His whole ministry was cast 
in an age of doubt and unrest, and in the 
course of that ministry he felt called upon to 
try a lance against the plumed Knights of 
Agnosticism and Materialism. He did not 
deny that they had a mission, but. was confi- 
dent, that when Huxley and Darwin and 
Spencer had done their work, the citadel of 
faith remained impregnable. The chapters 
of this volume, entitled "The Unseen Things 
the Most Real," "The Mystery of Mind," 
"The Bugbear of the Unknowable," "The 
Reality of Revelation and Authority," "The 
World's Debt to Christ," "The Mystery of 
"Goodness," "The Mystery of Pain," "Im- 
mortality, whether we wish for it or 
not," and kindred topics, are strong ser- 
mons, without texts. Vigorous, inspiring, 
often convincing and always optimistic, they 
are of a nature to carry conviction to serious 
minds, and to arrest the wavering and in- 
different. 

So ends this story of a noble life spent in 



82 Strong Personality. 

the Christian Ministry, without cant and 
without hypocrisy, a fruitful life lived in 
widely different fields, but powerful and ef- 
fective from first to last, with one aim, one 
direction, and never for a moment deflected 
from its true course. Such lives confirm the 
conviction, so often disputed by the super- 
ficial and worldly, that the manliest of men 
may occupy the pulpit through many years, 
with honour and independence, and bring to 
it gifts and graces, which would shine with 
equal brilliance in any other calling. Let 
the power, the character, and consecration 
be there, and there is no calling in life which 
offers such enviable rewards. Here was a 
man who owed little to mere circumstance, 
and nothing to personal aid or influence, who 
by sheer force of natural endowment won 
his way to the front rank of his profession. 
He never courted favours, but they came 
to him unsolicited. Too stubborn to bend 
obsequiously to any person, too honest for 
shifty compromise, and too brave to yield to 
any misfortune, never wearing a meretri- 
cious worth, or posing for what he was not, 
never betraying a friend, or taking mean 



Strong Personality. 83 

advantage of an enemy, he held his difficult 
and sometimes perplexing way with courage 
and dignity, until at the end he was able to 
look back over the busy years, and recall 
thousands of instances where he had touched 
human lives for their strengthening and 
healing. He was eyes to the blind, and feet 
to the lame, and the cause he knew not he 
searched out. What wonder then, that the 
lofty ideals of his early youth, were the 
visions which beautified his old age, ex- 
panded, illuminated, clarified, by a long and 
varied experience! These are no words of 
idle eulogy, but the sober judgments of one, 
who knew him through the greater part of 
his active life, and never stood indebted to 
him for anything, except the priceless privi- 
lege of his example and unbroken friendship. 

Adieu, dear friend ! Far across the sands 
of Time, lie memories age cannot dim, sweet 
recollections of counsel and help, when such 
friendship as thine was rare and precious. 
Forty years have come and gone, with vary- 
ing fortunes, and through all that time, 
whenever thy life touched mine, in early 
youth, or struggling manhood, it brought 



8 4 



Adieu! 



nothing but good, and now, as the shadows 
lengthen, and the mind dwells more and 
more on the receding past, and I sit in the 
evening, amid the splendours of sunset, and 
hear the murmur of the ocean, thy shining 
example is a constant inspiration, and thy 
familiar presence, though unseen, peoples 
the solitude, while 

"Echoes roll from soul to soul 
And grow forever and forever." 



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